DĪVĀN & TAZKIRA-ye
MAJĀLES-e SHOARĀ-e RUM

By:
Gharibi Mantashā Oghlu Tabrizi

Edited by:
Prof. Dr. Hossein Mohammadzade SEDIGH
(Düzgün)


Printed in Iran – Tehran
First printing: 2003
 

In the name of God

A Few Words 

One of the cunning policies of the abolished Pahlavi regime was hostility towards the Turkish language and trying to weaken and annihilate it. To effect this policy, which had begun worldwidely after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in world war I, the Pahlavi regime, since the English aided coup of Reza Khan up to the decline of the American dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Khan in Iran, used every means to depersonalize the honoured nation of Iranian Turks who had sacrificed their lives to strengthen the Quranic basis of this land.
Most of their efforts was devoted to hire some so-called scholars to despise and insult the history and civilization of Iranian Turks and to keep them ignorant of the glories of their ancestors and to metamorphose them.
These so-called scholars were assigned to show that the Turk’s history was non-Iranian and their language was a foreign one which was a combination of Persian and Arabic and even an unimportant dialect of Persian using vain reasoning and the national sacres of Iranian Turks were shamefully and desgracetully being insulted in all the academic and official sessions and writings. Those like Zabihollah Safa, Iraj Afshar, Mojtaba Minovi, Enayat Reza who were somehow decepiles of Ahmad Kasravi at least on this subject, had outstriped the others in this shameful and dictated act.
One of the most shameful acts of these malevolents and enemies of virtue and humanity was to destroy the Iranian Turkish hand-written books and manuscripts which were kept in libraries and museums since centuries ago. So that there were many Turkish manuscripts in the great library of Sheikh Safiyaddin Ardebili Mausoleum in Ardebil and the so-called Imperial library in Tehran, of wich there is no sign nowadays. Someone called Bastani Rad who used to rewrite the manuscripts purchased for the central library of Tehran university, used to omit many Turkish parts and to annihilate the manuscripts.
Some of the manuscripts which were not destroyed for whatever reasons, were kept in warehouses or safes never to be opened and they were not exposed to public research and studies.
I came upon one of these manuscripts after the glorious Islamic Revolution by guidelines of Mr. Haeri, director of Majlis library № 1. This manuscript belongs to a poet called Gharibi who was famous in Tabriz at the time of Shah Tahmasb Safavi. The inwardly- blind, anti-Turk fanatics had put this book among unusable books neither registered nor classified.
During several months of endeavoring day and night, I succeeded to arrange this most precious book roughly, and to provide what is now in front of the reader; I arranged nearly all the manuscript and now offer it to the lovers of the Iranian Turks language and literature in the Islamic period, other than the Epistle of John (= Risala-yi Yuhanna) which will be separately published.
It seems from the writings of Gharibi Tabrizi, prose or poetry, that he is a talented, eloquent poet who knows arts of poetry very well as wel as the Quranic arts and Islamic history, jurisprudence, methodology, theology and philosophy.
I have arranged poems of this oppressed poet in 12 sections as per the sual method in Turkish poem books. I have also added to the end of the book the memento of Rumi poet’s session which itself has been hurt by the fanatic officials of the library and some of its pages have been cut off.
What remains now from Gharibi's memento (=Tazkira-yi Majalis) is the biographies of 52 poets in Asia Minor who were somehow his contemporaries. He begine the memento in memorandum of Mowlavi, the Turkish Persian poet of the Islamic world, and ends it with Latifi.
I have not had so far the time to do research on Gharibi’s life nor have I found anything of importance. To write his biography, one should consider the era of Sah Tahmasb Safavi’s reign in Tabriz. What is understood from his books of poetry is that he is originally from the Mantasha tribe in Asia Minor, and since he had long lived in Tabriz, he was nick- named Gharibi Tabrizi. He had relations with the court of Shah Tahmasb in Tabriz and he was a devoted Shia who had some poems against the Ottomans. Of course these poems were made due to the bitter wars between the Safavis and the Ottomans. It is evident that these bitter wars between the two brothres were caused by the enemies of Turks and Muslims. It is not our aim to bring about the reminiscence of those bitter wars by releasing this book. During the Middle Ages most nations have fought each others. As the Russians fought the Russians and in history books published nowadays they try to evade those wars. But during the Pahlavi regime, our enemies exaggerated in describing wars between Safavi and Ottomans in historical textbook and it was also one of their methods to fight with the voluntary repatriation of Iranian Turks.
Now that the Iranian Turks have an opportunity of freedom, it is the duty of scholars to compensate 50 years of Anti- Turkism and to substitute it with Turkish culture and knowledge and to publish treasures of Turkish language one after another.
They will not succeed in their way until they seek shelter under Islam and the Quran. And under shelter of the Islamic Government they would get strength and disclose their enemies who are definitely non Muslims.
We will introduce “Gharibi Tabrizi” in 3 volumes: volume 1 is in 14 sections consisting of the Ghazaliyyat, Qasida, Matlai, Maqta’, Fard, Murabba, Mukhammas, Muashshar, Tarji- bands, tarkib- bands, couplet poems Mathnavi, Qitas, and the collection of Tazkira- Majalis-ı Shuara-yi Rum. All these classification and headings were chosen by me myself and deduced from various parts of the above-mentioned manuscript. In volume 2, I have precisely described my working method. Volume 2 consists of the biography of Gharibi and the required indices. Volume 3 consists of the Epistle of John (Risala- yi Yuhanna) and The Four Season book.

Dr. H. M. SADIGH
Tehran - 1990